"Paul?" asked Chief Bolt. His voice sounded different. "There was a Paul who lived here."
"You know him?"
"I saw him a couple of times when I was a child. At the town Christmas party. The Easter egg hunt on the lawn out front."
"Really? What was he like?"
"Short," said the chief. "He was a toddler. He died when he was about a year and a half old."
"Must not be the same Paul," said Quentin.
"You went out to the graveyard," said the chief. "Let's go out there again. Let's look around."
"You got the heat turned on out there?" But the chief was already heading up the stairs. Quentin followed.
The snow was big flakes now, a Christmasy kind of snow instead of the nasty drizzly snow that had been falling earlier. All the old footprints were gone. But the chief seemed to have memorized Quentin's route through the graveyard.
"like you're trying to catch someone at first, big strides," said Bolt. "And then you see there's nobody in here and you have to see if there's any other way out, or if they climbed over the fence—am I right?"
"Dead on."
"And then you start looking at the headstones. I checked every single one you stopped at. Simon, Minerva, Jude, Stephen."
"I noticed the coincidence," said Quentin. "But the dates were impossible."
"See this one?" He pointed out the grave of the infant Paul who had died at the age of a year and a half.
"Yeah, I saw it," said Quentin.
"Paul was Rowena's brother. She never knew him, though. He was older, and he died a couple of years before she was born. But she came here a lot, to look at his grave."
"Grim," said Quentin.
"After I kissed her that time, after she was sure I was in love with her, she told me a secret. The reason why she wanted to get away from this house."
Quentin said nothing. This was obviously a very difficult memory for Chief Bolt—he was trembling, and his voice was thick with emotion.
"She told me her brother had been murdered."
Quentin felt a chill run through him.
But the chief wasn't done yet. "She told me her mother killed him."
What a wonderful family, thought Quentin. Grandmother, with blood on her hands.
"I take it you never arrested Mrs. Tyler for the crime," said Quentin.
"I didn't believe her. I told Rowena that she must have overheard something and misunderstood it. What evidence did she have, I asked. How could she possibly know something that happened before she was born? And she just looked at me and said, 'I know what I know, Mike.' "
"And?"
"And when I didn't believe her, she didn't see me anymore. She wasn't in the kitchen when I finished my day's work. I hung around each day, waiting. Came early and stayed late. Worked especially hard, but I never saw her."
"She hid from you?"
"I couldn't even ask, because if I asked that would imply that I had some right to ask, and I was the gardener's assistant, for Pete's sake. But I didn't have to ask, I knew what she was telling me. After a couple of weeks I quit and became a cop in Albany, which was a bigger city than I wanted to live in, and after a couple of years the job I've got now was open and they hired me and I came back and I just couldn't stay away from this house, I'd stop by here and Mrs. Tyler would talk to me and tell me news about Rowena and how she was sorry I just missed her. And then she got married and I told you the rest."
"Do you believe her now?"
"I was five when Paul Tyler died. But I looked it up in the library. The Mixinack paper was a daily in those days and the story filled the front page for a week. A real tragedy. The chauffeur backed over the baby. Didn't see him toddle behind the car after he started it up."
"Doesn't sound like murder."
"Chauffeur left at once for England. Distraught, poor guy. Wasn't even here for the inquest. The family didn't blame him, they even paid his way. Out of the country. He was the only witness."
"But who would doubt what happened?"
"So here you are, with a New York limo driver to back up your story about seeing lights and servants here, and a wife who claimed to have grown up in this house. And you have breakfast with people whose names are all on headstones in the graveyard. Including a boy that Rowena told me was murdered by his own mother. If that was true, how could she know? How?"
Quentin didn't answer.
"Because in this house," said Bolt, "the dead walk."
Quentin looked away. Walked to the entrance of the graveyard and looked out over the falling snow. He heard Bolt come up behind him, looked over his shoulder at him.
"So I'm crazy, is that it?" asked Bolt.
"Have you ever seen anything yourself?" asked Quentin.
"Only one thing," said Bolt.
Quentin waited.
"The door at the back of the entry hall, the back left—it doesn't open."
The parlor door.
"Your footprints led right up to that door, and then back out again, but I didn't see where you turned around," said Bolt. "You've been in that room, haven't you?"
Quentin nodded.
"It opened for you."
"I sure can't go through walls."
"The cook said that nobody ever went in that room," said Bolt.
"I'm not surprised to hear it," said Quentin.
"Can't see in through the windows."
Quentin looked over at the house. "Takes kind of a tall ladder to find that out, doesn't it?"
"The old lady asked me to keep an eye on the house."
"Apparently the parlor is an exception."
"Am I right?" asked Bolt.
Quentin nodded. "As far as I know. Yeah, you're right. I ate breakfast with some dead people."
"Except one," said Bolt.
"Grandmother," said Quentin.
"You see why I had to have your answer before I took you out to see her."
"Well what was that about beating me up in the kitchen?"
"Because I was hoping I was wrong and you were just a rich guy jerking people around."
"Why would that be better?"
"Because if baby Paul was murdered, that would explain why the house is haunted. And that would explain how Rowena knew that somebody murdered him."
"And you didn't believe her."
"And I lost her."
Quentin leaned against the arch. "Well, Chief Bolt, sometimes folks just screw up."
"I can't say I screwed up," said Bolt. "I love my wife and my kids. I have a good life. And if I'd gotten involved with the Tylers, well—look how good it's all worked out for you."
"Which is not to say that Madeleine fits into the haunted house theory," said Quentin.
"Does she have to be buried here to haunt it? Or maybe she was secretly buried."
Quentin shook his head. "There's just one little problem with the ghost theory, Chief. I met Madeleine in Washington, DC at a party. We traveled all over the country together. Must be five hundred people shook her hand at parties and fundraisers and dinners, not to mention our wedding. I don't think she's a ghost."
"Well, then, we're back to my original theory, and I have to wonder if you have any witness besides yourself who saw her alive last night."
"Can't we just agree that some really weird stuff happened here the night I slept over?" said Quentin.
"Mr. Fears, before I take you to see the old lady, I have to point out to you that one of the main reasons I didn't believe Rowena is because I knew Mrs. Tyler. She's one of the best people I know. And there is not a chance, not one skinny chance in hell that she would murder anybody, let alone her own baby."